2022’s holiday delivery challenge: softening e-commerce demand
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LOS ANGELES, Sept 19 (Reuters) – FedEx (FDX.N), United Parcel Service (UPS.N) and other delivery firms that fought with too much pandemic-fueled demand from online retailers like Amazon and Walmart, now have the opposite problem – too much delivery capacity.
Online sales started fizzling during last year’s peak delivery season from Thanksgiving weekend through the end of the year. FedEx, UPS and the US Postal Service (USPS) kept adding facilities and staff, even as more consumers returned to in-store shopping and higher food, fuel and rent costs eroded discretionary spending.
Those delivery firms can now handle 110 million holiday packages per day. That could outpace peak season demand by 18 million packages per day, according to Satish Jindel, a consultant whose holiday peak volume forecasts are closely watched by delivery firms.
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